If you have a decision that depends on what he does you could just say "I'll do this IF Bittman knife fights the guy ELSE I'll..."

I appreciate anything that makes the game flow faster. But I wouldn't mind you guys talking things out before rushing to perform actions.

Not only you'd probably end up with better tactics, I'd get a better idea of what the team is trying to do as a whole and could plan accordingly.

Even if your characters technically aren't close enough to speak to each other and therefore sharing plans would be kind of OOC, I just don't care. The game is full of weird OOC / metagaming crap anyway, like Fate points and guns appearing out of nowhere and what not! You could just say your characters talked about it beforehand.

Summer points out the scar-faced soldier with a grenade. Unfortunately, rather than duck for cover Bittman drops his gun and leaps headlong into the fray. "A worthy adversary! Steel yourself!" Summer wasn't sure if the commando was addressing the soldier or herself but quickly looked for a spot to steel away into after picking up the discarded rifle.

The power armour takes aim and shoots at Bittman who is running out of the shack. The bullets whistle around Bittman and he loses 1 physical HP. He throws himself toward the scar-faced soldier, lunging his knife towards the large man holding the grenade. But Scarface anticipates the move and grabs the Green Earth captain by the knife arm and twists! He pulls Bittman into his bear-like embrace!

Bittman is locked in Scarface's WRESTLING HOLD. He won't be able to move before he has dealt with the situation.

But! He earns one Fate Point:

The scarred soldier's comrades are too afraid to interfere and instead fire towards the shack where Summer is hiding.

Even though Summer's hiding place has good cover and she is doing her best to keep her head down, she is starting to feel there are just too many enemies. Their shots are beginning to land too close. Summer loses 1 physical HP.

The guards are joined by the four remaining soldiers from the South Yard who are no longer pinned down by Summer's suppressive fire.

Teddy gives up the search and climbs the stairs to the roof of the building. He sees the man from earlier crouching near the edge of the roof taking peeks towards the cluster of sheds where the sounds of firefight can be heard and the muzzle flashes seen. There are other Black Hole soldiers crouching and lying prone in positions near the edge holding guns aimed towards the shacks, waiting for a fire order. Near the southern edge of the roof, Teddy can see a communications mast carrying an assemblage of various antennas and dishes.

Baggett takes one look at the carbine brought by Teddy. "You malfunctioning piece of #%/@* drone! I can only use punctuation characters because this is a family friendly game! Where is the mounted machine gun I requested?!"

He listens to Teddy's flimsy explanation while only growing redder. Suddenly, he pauses and squints at the robot. "Wait a minute. I didn't know we had drones in here? Shouldn't you be at the eastern front?"

Baggett doesn't seem to quite have caught up to Teddy's ruse yet, but he's growing suspicious.

The Lad moves to the Motor Pool and hides under a truck. He watches the soldiers shuffling around, some of them carrying flashlights as the evening is getting darker. They have not noticed his presence yet.

You see one pair of combat boots walking right past the truck, near enough you could probably grab him. There are no others nearby. It seems he's carrying two jerry canisters - probably gasoline.

Summer sees Bittman locked in combat with the enemy and instinctively lines up a shot. She wasn't thinking, there was no time for that. She was all reflexes now, rifle braced against the shoulder, enemy in the sights, finger on the trigger, and pull.

So you are instinctively shooting towards Bittman? How do you avoid hitting him or do you just not care?

edit: Oh btw I was going to make a long ass post in the rules topic about hand grenades. I didn't finalise it yet but the basic gist is anyone can spend a Fate point to turn it into a grenade any time, no questions asked. Including special and non-lethal variants such as smoke, flash-bang etc.

It should also function as a sort of yardstick. A Fate point can do any general thing that is at least as useful as a grenade suddenly pulled out of your belt. If people are wondering about how far they can go with their use.

I'm also going to say Scarface has a grenade because he spent a Fate point. The OpFor has 3 FP left.

Stress is technically not actual damage. The stress boxes represent reasons / excuses why you would avoid getting hurt when you probably should get hurt. When you run out of them, the Consequences are what are used to track actual injuries.

I feel it probably works reasonably well for hand-to-hand / melee combat, but with firefights it's kind of difficult to come up with colourful reasons why you would survive being shot other than the bullets just really not hitting you this time after all!

The mental stress track is a bit of an idiosyncracy of the FATE system. It's there for something called "mental conflicts" - which are basically combat happening using non-physical things as attacks like verbal insults, logical reasoning and anything else you could imagine yourself using to impose your will on others in a scene that doesn't involve actual physical violence. Debates, arguments, rap battles etc. could be thought to be mental conflicts.

I guess this is there to facilitate something like "combat" in settings where physical violence isn't much of a factor. Would probably be useful in the Kardashians RPG where a slight to your ego can injure or kill you. I've been thinking of maybe getting rid of the mental track and replacing it with my own morale system, or just ignoring that aspect of the game entirely (leaving the players to RP it)

The lad lay under the vehicle, he slowly removed the backpack from his back and opened it, taking great care to not make a racket. The metallic water-bottle he had nicked earlier lay at the bottom, he drew it out and got ready to chuck it. Due to being under the the vehicle he wouldn't be able to toss it far, though hopefully the black coat he saw would notice it and go investigate.

He threw it.

The soldier turned his head towards the bottle, then started to make his way towards it. The Lad slipped out from under the vehicle and swiftly made his way to the man, his hand clenched around the butchers knife he had claimed a while back. It was time to get some payback...
=========The Lad
Physical Health: 2/3
Mental Health: 3/3
Fate Points: 0
Remaining Cards: 1-4, 6
Consequences:
Weakened By Captivity (Mild)
Roughed Up (Moderate)

Ok I may be revealing things that your characters strictly speaking shouldn't know, but since things seem to be going south and this is your first real battle maybe it can be excused.

You don't have to think like taking Rudolph is the only way you can escape. It might be the only way for you to get that special vehicle for further adventures with you but if I were you I'd be more concerned with survival at this point.

Some of the "objectives" in this scenario just might not be achievable anymore.

As for enemies outside the compound, you don't know if there are any, but it's a reasonable supposition that there would be.

Teddy dully states that it merely does as it is told; transport errors are not its concern.

Teddy announces that it has a report of the attack:
hostile forces breached the southeast perimeter, seemingly underground
number is unknown, they may be a scouting party sent behind the frontlines
a Blue Moon soldier with a field radio was seen, however

Teddy recommends ensuring the communications array is in optimal working conditions and for vehicles to be prepared for evacuation in case of an Allied deep strike.

It looks there will be a Mental Conflict starting between Teddy and Baggett.

But first we must define the goals for each participant, and the costs for losing.

That means, what each participant wants to happen if they win. Baggett wants Teddy to go downstairs and bring the machine gun to him. If he wins, Teddy would basically be forced to go downstairs - if you refuse to follow orders, you will be found out and the soldiers will start physically attacking you.

What is unclear to me what exactly Teddy wants to happen, so you need to define that more clearly.

edit: On a second thought, a Conflict would probably be just overkill. I'll be treating it as a Contest instead. (basically an opposed action) You still need to define what you want, though. Baggett will likely be rolling Command. The skill you use depends on your goals, but it sounds like you're trying to Deceive.

Active skill should be Deceive, since Teddy is making a cover story for interacting with the comms mast or being put on fuel duty. But what happens in case of a tie? As a (non) player character, Command should be no higher than 4 before a point bonus.

Alternatively, Teddy concedes the contest in exchange for a fate point.

Teddy is making a cover story for interacting with the comms mast or being put on fuel duty.

No either ors please. You're making up a deception that stretches credibility either way - please focus on one thing or you'll probably just fail.

I'll assume Teddy wants to be allowed to take a closer look at the comms array. Baggett doesn't seem like a very authoritative figure - his Command is probably 1 or 2. There doesn't seem to be anything obviously wrong with the array, but you could pass it off as routine maintenance. Baggett looks stupid enough he might buy it.

If you tie, I'll count it as a success for Teddy, but with a complication (whatever that is, you'll have to wait and see)

If you fail, you'll probably be caught.

You can of course back down and I'll give you a Fate point if you do. Actually no. That only applies to conflicts.

I'd say you can do that without spending any points. I don't think Sven will mind too much. This is not what the fate points are for anyway. They are for things that turn tables in your favour. (And the game very much expects you to use them. A lot.)

If this continues for long, though, I might just simply kill him off. No use keeping around players who don't play.

Regarding the Bittman situation, theoretically Summer can spend a point to activate Crossfire, another point for a general +2 bonus, and combine these with her default 2 Shoot for +6 minimum on a neutral roll. Bittman also has Body Armour which probably costs a point to put into play but lets him use 2 Physique as a second defending roll after the 3 Athletics. If Summer retreats this turn, the enemy squad will probably follow her which would put them in a trap-filled choke-point but then Bittman is stranded in the shed area.

I originally scoured the rule book for something about absent players but, despite the system being built around meta concepts, there does not seem to be any formal contingency for that.